Second and third frames of third page.

I have hugely enjoyed the Aldebaran cycle of bandes dessinées by Leo (Luiz Eduardo de Oliveira) and thought this might be worth a try. The story is by Leo and Rodolphe (Rodolphe Daniel Jacquette) and art by Bertrand Marchal. I had not realised that it’s actually the start of a fourth series of albums about the adventures of Kathy Austin, a British secret agent at the end of the 1940s; previously she has visited Kenya, Namibia and the Amazon.

Here she goes to Scotland to visit the house that she has inherited from her aunt, only to discover that it has been badly damaged by a fire and that her aunt’s suspicious death has not been investigated properly; incidentally there are Soviet agents and alien artifacts hanging around too.

It would be very easy for a (mostly) French creative team to slip into stereotypes here, and I’m glad to say that they have avoided it at least with regard to the humans of Scotland, with a reasonably sensitive depiction of rural and small-town folks dealing with Kathy’s return from years away. The landscapes are beautifully done, with Kathy brooding in front of a loch on the cover. The first four of the five in this series are out, and I’ll work through them. You can get Scotland, Épisode 1 here.

Second frame of third page of Épisode 1:

Second frame of third page of Épisode 2:

The first two in what we are promised will be a four part story from the Brazilian-French comics writer Leo, following on from the previous 26 albums in the Aldebaran cycle since 1994. Kim, who has been the central character for most of the stories, is sent with her friend and colleague Manon to investigate the backward world of Bellatrix, where a misogynist conservative faction seems likely to win the elections and remove women’s rights.

Meanwhile their support mission in orbit, supported by the alien Avarants who have requested the Bellatrix intervention, runs into problems of its own when another alien race, the Arctarods, turns up.

As ever, gorgeously drawn; the political point is a lot more cogent than in some of Leo’s previous work; both of the first two albums end on cliff-hangers, which suggests that a decent amount of thought has gone into the plotting. Even minor characters get some credible presence here as well. I love that the lead Avarant has decided to call himself Seamus.

Unfortunately, these have yet to be translated into English, but you can get the original Épisode 1 here and the original Épisode 2 here.

Second frame of third page of volume 1:

Second frame of third page of volume 2:

As my regular reader knows, I have a long-term fascination with the Aldébaran series of bandes dessinées by Brazilian-French artist Leo. Last year he published a two-episode story, Neptune, which takes us on the next steps of the story of the series’ central character, Kim, and her new young colleague, Manon. Despite their young age, their life experience makes them ideal members of a team sent to explore a mysterious alien structure that appears in Earth’s solar system; it’s a nicely done homage to Arthur C. Clarke’s Rama, and other similar stories. The mysterious object turns out to contain some mysterious humans in a jungle habitat filled with new forms of alien life, so Leo executes his usual flamboyant otherworldly landscapes. It’s a good taster for the rest of his works, so if you want to see if Leo writes the kind of bandes dessinées that you might like, you could do worse than starting with Neptune. You can get volume 1 here and volume 2 here in French; volume 1 comes out in English translation next week, and volume 2 in April.